In August, 1982, in the midst of global recession, skyrocketing interest
rates and declining commodity prices, the Mexican government of
Jos6 L6pez Portillo announced that Mexico was unable to service the
interest payments on its foreign debt. Mexico’s default set in motion
the chain of events that produced the Latin American debt crisis, the end-
less negotiations with First-World lenders and governments, and the ulti-
mate implementation of the free-market economic reforms insisted upon
by international financial institutions. Mexico, the first in the hemisphere
to acknowledge its debt crisis, was thus among the first to embark on a
course of neoliberal adjustment and reform.
Under the presidencies of Miguel De la Madrid (1982-1988) and Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-
1994), this course of reform has been embodied by the country’s determined insertion into the glob-
al economy-most dramatically by way of NAFTA-and by the growing importance of domestic
and transnational capital as driving forces of social and economic relations. First under De la
Madrid, and then more forcefully under Salinas, the government has deregulated markets, promoted
foreign investment, sold state enterprises, abandoned the ejidos, shrunk the public sector, and pur-
sued policies to maintain Mexico’s “comparative advantage”-low wages and a flexible work
force-in the world market. In keeping with this agenda, Salinas, within the loosely authoritarian
framework of Mexican politics, has sought to create a more efficient and technocratic form of gov-
ernment. Under De la Madrid and Salinas, the technocratic factions of the ruling Institutional Revo-
lutionary Party (PRI)-particularly those associated with the Treasury and the Central Bank-saw
their influence expand, while the clout of the old-guard politicos and the PRI-affiliated labor leader-
ship was sharply diminished.
Since Mexico was one of the pioneers of the Latin American neoliberal project, it should come as
no surprise that the project should bear so much of its contradictory fruit in the Mexican political
arena first. Neoliberal contradictions-macroeconomic growth and increasing investment opportu-
nity accompanied by declining real wages, fiscal contraction, and explosive growth of the informal,
marginal sector of society-are at the center of the Chiapas rebellion, the internal conflicts within
the ruling PRI, and the great social crisis caused by the presence of 13 million peasants considered
“redundant” by government planners. As inequality heightens, the high-visibility components of
neoliberal success are, as Denise Dresser tells us, “no longer sufficient to keep the ‘other Mexico’ at
bay.”
This August’s national elections come in one of the most convulsive years in recent Mexican his-
tory. The year began with the indigenous uprising in Chiapas, continued through the first assassina-
tion of a presidential candidate in 66 years-a crime yet to be solved to the satisfaction of the Mexi-
can public-and will climax the week of August 21 as the votes are counted in what promises to be
a contentious and suspicion-laden process.
For a few months this past winter, events in Chiapas became a fulcrum of debate over issues of
economic policy, democratic reform, and the class and caste relations of the countryside. With elec-
tion day approaching, the discussion remains fierce, though the question of the PRI’s authoritarian
rule has clearly taken center stage. As the destinies of the countries of the Americas become ever
more intertwined, this Mexican debate is raising issues that reverberate well beyond the boundaries
of the country-far south of Chiapas, and north of the Rio Grande.
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